And now, BELIEVE IN MY AUTHORITY, the mature slash fiction from Brandon Stroud

Pre-show notes:

– Do me a favor … if you’ve never shared a Best and Worst of WWE Raw column before, share this one. We’ve got to keep our momentum up now that the WrestleMania crowd has lost interest and vanished into Game of Thrones and Mad Men (or old reruns of The Nanny?). You’re the most important part of making this column successful. Well, you and Reddit, when they notice it.

– I didn’t get a chance to last week, but I want to thank everyone who came out to the premiere of Meet Me There in New Orleans on WrestleMania weekend. If you missed it, we’ve got a showing as part of the Sunscreen Film Festival in St. Petersburg, FL, on May 4, as well as a second “premiere” in Austin on May 20. We’ve got a few more unannounced things coming up after that, so it’s an exciting time. If you can help us be a part of a festival/get screened somewhere else, find me at one of those above links and let me know. You’ll get my friendship forever, and you’ll probably get to hang with Goldust*.

*Goldust not guaranteed (although people who hung out with us in New Orleans got to hang out with him AND Dusty. And me**.)
**Me not guaranteed.

Please click through for the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for April 14, 2014.

Ive been waiting all day to see if anyone got a comment of the week for a “of course Alabama fans give heat to evolution” comment. There must have been 100 of them last night. It was entering Cena photoshop territory.

Could we make it a law that Dolph Ziggler is the only person allowed to take the Bullhammer? Like, even if Barrett is wrestling Sheamus, Dolph appears to take the move as Sheamus’ stunt double, then rolls out of the way so Sheamus can be pinned?

Since I started watching wrestling again (a little over a year ago), I never hated John Cena, that is until last night. I hated the Thuganomics Cena, what little I saw of him from my college roommate watching Smackdown while I was in the room, but until last night, I was always pretty indifferent about current Cena.

Up until last night, nothing he did ever got on my nerves to the point where I was like “FUCK THIS SHIT!” His wrestling is meh at times, but sometimes he plays up to his competition. His promos are kind of goofy, sometimes okay, but I never had that chills down my spine from nails on a chalkboard feeling like I got last night. IT WAS AWFUL, AND I HATE THIS CENA!!! THIS CENA IS FROM THE DARKEST TIMELINE!!!

If the audience at the next RAW has any common sense they’ll run after him with pitchforks.

FUCK YOU PHOTOSHOP JEHRN JACK! CENA.

04.15.14 at 3:57 pm

elliotimes

I know there has to be some kind of levity on a 3-hour wrestling show. It can’t all be grim threats. People have to laugh at some point.

But is it so much to ask that whenever Bray Wyatt is onscreen, we can always just have that be impactful and grim? Because he is very good at that. His character was created for it. His character was NOT created for fat jokes and “YOU LOOK REAL DUMB HEHEHE I’M SMIRKING” jokes.

If I have to take a positive away from this, it does increase my desire to see Bray beat Cena into nothingness.

Can you imagine what Cena would’ve done to the Undertaker character if he was “the man” when Undie was around full-time? HURR HURR LOOKIT THAT GINGER ZOMBIE… (clicks slideshow clicker) WITH A SOMBRERO ON HIS HEAD HURR HURR

On the bright side (because I HAVE to try to find a bright side after that garbage promo from Cena), Wyatt immediately called Cena out for his jokey BS. That’s what needs to happen. I can put up with Cena getting some laffs with the kiddies and the… Special Olympians in the crowd, but he needs to be called on it.

I just rolled my eyes at the Photoshop stuff– what really bugged me was “serious John” who followed, making up complete bullshit about Wyatt not being able to win without the family. I hate when Cena just makes up his own reality.

There was a promo a few weeks ago where Bray was like “I can be anyone you want me to be” or something like that, there he imitated a child’s voice and that’s where I first noticed how he and Bo actually are more similar than I originally thought. But, boy, on this RAW Bray just went full Bo. Never go full Bo, Bray. Well, sometimes you can. Thinking about it, it really is pretty creepy.

Two weekends ago, my best friend and his fiancee were visiting from out of town, and in an effort to maximize our time hanging out while not missing out on WM live, I invited them over for dinner and a small watch party. Given their short stay in town, they asked if we could also invite some common acquaintances so they’d get time with everyone. These additional guests are OK folks I suppose, but whereas my best friend is a lapsed wrestling fan, these people were the kind of folks who legit didn’t realize that Dwayne Johnson started as the Rock. At various points throughout the night, the mask would slip from their faces, and they’d stop playing along, dropping the derisive cliches – “boy, they get awful close to each other in their spandex, maybe they’ll MAKE OUT!” or “[seeing the Shield for the first time] do they know they’re not REALLY a SWAT team?” or the classic, “this isn’t real, you know.” Their position was annoying, not because it was snide – it’s hard not to watch this with a bit of sarcasm, after all – but because it chose not to play along.

That’s the problem with these Cena promos. He doesn’t play along. And it’s deeper than just breaking kayfabe, because Reality Era Pipe Bomb blah blah blah. It’s the kid who throws “dynamite” during Paper Rock Scissors. It’s Michael Scott doing improv theater. Yeah, John, it’s fake, and Bray Wyatt isn’t really David Koresh meets Phil Robertson. You pointing that out doesn’t make you cool, it ruins our fun. It’s not appealing to the marginal fan, it’s appealing to the non-fan, the people laughing AT my little televised diversion simply because it exists.

Yes. This stuff sucks for the other performers because they are trying to convince you that they are their character, who can be a silly thing. John Cena has the easiest time in the world doing that, because as Brandon once said (paraphase), “You know what John Cena’s real name is? John Cena”.

Once John Cena retires he can host a show on the WWE Network called ‘John Cena Ruins It All':
“Hey Kane, you aren’t really the Undertaker’s brother, you’re just some guy”
“Undertaker, you aren’t really a zombie. I saw your balls in the locker room”
“Jake, you just rent those snakes”
“Abe Schwartz, you aren’t really a baseball, you are the Brooklyn Brawler”
“Giant Gonzales, you are not really muscular”
“Bella twins, we can easily tell you two apart”
“CM Punk, Pepsi is not better than Coke”
“John Cena, you win matches because of booking, not hustle”
and so on…

The reason we “re-wrote your entrance music” in New Orleans isn’t because “some of us love you and some of us hate you and we bought a ticket so we get to have an opinion,” John. It is because you have intentionally suppressed the future of the WWE. You have continually stunted the growth of and at times completely destroyed the characters of those whom you have to work with. Calling Alberto Del Rio out on not owning his cars or photoshopping the Wyatt Family is just asinine. What you do does not legitimize yourself. It only deligimitizes everyone around you and the entire WWE as an extension.

You are the worst thing about wrestling, John Cena and you are largely responsible for the WWE’s continued failure on the stock market. Please understand this concept before it’s too late and you have sunk the good ship pro wrestling forever.

Yours truly,
The motherfucker who will hit you in the head with a brick if you don’t cut this shit out

Couldn’t agree any more.
Bray is trying to do something nobody does in the WWE, complete and total character. If you buy in to his character, he takes on a long strange trip with a wierd hillbilly cultist who maybe has some connection to ghosts. That’s interesting, and it’s really good so far.

What does not help, and in fact hurts, if having fucking Cena stand there and point and say “HEY EVERYONE, THIS GUY IS ACTUALLY JUST A WRESTLER LIKE ME” and winking and nodding all the time.

I get his deal, he’s a product of the Attitude/Reality era we have been living since the early 90’s. I am glad there are characters and people like him, who break that 4th wall and hang a lampshade on wrestling At it’s core the world of pro graps is very silly and deserves light derision, the entire enterprise demands that we all play along while simultaneously acknowledging how goofy and childish it really is.

But, time and place. Cena’s winky-faces and nudge-nudge work and are fair game among the Santino’ and Foley’s of the world, guys whose characters also play off of the goofy unreal reality of the show. Keep it the fuck away from Bray. He is trying to do something we don’t see much anymore, be an actual all-the-time wrestling archetype. For those of us who love wrestling so much, please don’t ruin this John. Go make your millions and support the troops and winky-face and point at Santino or the Rock, leave the Wyatts alone. Let them be their own cool thing over in the corner with the Shield.

I once reached the Top of the Mountain with a comment- can’t be taken from me….

04.15.14 at 4:14 pm

jbshakes

I missed the first 90 minutes of the show last night putting my own little girls to bed, and hadn’t seen Warrior’s HoF speech (Mr. T’s momma made me fall asleep). But “the most awesome thing I’ve ever done is be your Dad” now has me sobbing at my desk. Life is really stupid sometimes.

Oh, and all of the F**K YOUs in the world to Cena and Orton for being the two assholes standing in front who couldn’t be bothered to take their own merch off for 2 f**king minutes and throw on a Warrior shirt. Seriously, guys. F**k you.

How do we feel about Layla and how handsy she is with the other Divas? She has a pretty solid reputation as an in ring molester, even here she very clearly feels up Emma when she pins her. Is it kind of awesome? Like I want to say it’s kind of awesome but that’s not being very progressive…

I don’t like where Emma is at now, but I think it’s a way to introduce her and she has the talent to recover. At some point Santino has to move on to (insert new Diva) and she’ll be able to blossom on her own.

Also, I’m hoping Shamus’ dominance leads to him losing to Cesaro in the finals! And the Cesaro/Heyman dynamic is a bit odd. I think a better crowd could handle it better…but it just confuses Alabama greatly.

Emma will be fine. Remember Beth Phoenix was saddled up in a comedy couple with Santino and she made it out alive. Honestly the problem isn’t even that she’s paired with Santino, the problem is that they throw them together and don’t let her DO anything. They give their matches 45 seconds, in their backstage skits he does all the talking and she just kinda reacts, when they come out to the ring they walk out to his entrance music etc. It’s fine to make them a duo but at least make the young up-and-comer the focal point of the duo since she’s the one you’re trying to introduce everyone to.

Does that mean Kane and Daniel Bryan are still friends? And the entire idea of sicking Kane on Bryan next week backfires into a hug it out moment? Because if that is the case, I AM SO DOWN YOU HAVE NO IDEA

Obviously, I agree 100% with the photoshop Cena promo analysis. But don’t you find it a little hypocritical that this site is always posting memes and things of that nature. Like this juvenile jokes aren’t funny, but these ones over here are. Not to sound high and mighty or whatever, but I don’t think any of those things resemble anything humorous.

Since “believe in Evolution” was uttered from the mouth of the number one bad guy on the show, I’d love it if some left-wing attention whore went on MSNBC to decry Triple H’s conservative indoctrination agenda.

As a Yankee whose Yankee parents moved to southeastern Alabama in 2009, the Alabama Ten Count was a legitimate spit take moment for me. I just finished wiping sprayed water off of my desk, and thankfully I didn’t need that sushi menu anymore.

Jack Swagger will jump Cesaro in the finals of the IC tournament sending Sheamus to Extreme Rules to fight Big E and setting up a Jack Swagger/Cesaro match off of a tired ass trope instead of focusing on all the storyline interactions the two had that led to the team breaking up.

Or we really could be in the era of creative booking post WM30 but damn, it’s been a week and I’m already pessmistic again.

I wanted to come here and make a comment on how insane everything has been, or how childish “good guys” really are on this show, or how Dolph Ziggler is basically the saddest pile of bleached meat I’ve ever seen. But damn, Lana, guys. Lana.

I don’t buy the conspiracy-theory, I think the main reason for utting Heyman and Cesaro together is hat Heyman is by far the best hype-monger in WWE, and Cesaro have som many hype-worthy accomplishments. And to save Cesaro from a full blown face-turn. I much prefer him as a 3. option, so Evolution can be the true heels. Meanwhile he, and Lesnar, can be beyond the mortal bound of “good and evil” and just be ass-kickers extraordinaire who eeryone, heel or face alike, fears.

This is a random-ass question, but did you post this from your mobile device? The grammar, syntax, and punctuation all suggest you’ve got an excellent grasp of the English language, but there are some weird-ass misspelling and whatnot that confounded me.

I don’t know if I’m the only one not already listening to Steve Austin’s podcast, but I checked it out this week because he’s got an interview with Paul Heyman. It’s pretty interesting. The episode is over 90 minutes long, and I guess they talked so much that there’s a part two coming on Thursday.

Can you uh, not go out of your way to shit on Xavier Woods whenever he shows up? We get it, you don’t like him, and he’s not exactly a great wrestler but man it’s just coming off as excessively hateful now.

True. It was a thirty second squash where Xavier got in no offense. I personally thought it would be the kind of Xavier Woods Brandon might be okay with. Did seem harsh to worst him, but it’s his opinion column. If we don’t like it, we can always ask for our money back.

thank you, sheamus has been bothering me for a while now with his ‘albino cena’ gimmick. only the big show was allowed to beat him. i was really looking forward to swagger/cesaro in the finals, but as soon as he got sheamus in the ankle lock, i knew that wasn t going to happen since the dude never ever ever taps…ever

It sucks when a bad guy like Swagger can have such a creative way of locking in his submission and you know a “good” guy like Sheamus won’t tap, thus making it pointless. Next time a top non-Cena face is on break, they should have Swags (or whoever) kayfabe break the guy’s ankle or arm or whatever, he taps, to reinvigorate submissions.

Warrior went from this comical, ridiculous memory of wrestling’s past to a real guy; a real walking, talking human being who had his problems but was clearly trying to make things right. He squeezed his daughters’ hands. He wasn’t screaming about queering and destrucity anymore, he was telling people he loved them.

As someone who absolutely loathed Warrior I found myself slowly charmed by his return, with his death washing away old bad feelings. I always assumed he was going to live to 90 just to spite people. And I’m truly sad he won’t.

ON a happier note! Why don’t they count title defenses? “Daniel Bryan has defended the WWE title 83 times”? And instead of feuding him with Kane while Evolution is in the main event (:sigh: I, too, remember the summer of 2004) why not have him do a “fighting champion” gimmick?

I know, right?! I never thought about it much before, but after reading brandon mentioning it here and then reading how NJPW’s heavyweight champion kazuchika okada is near breaking some record of most title defenses in one reign, I started to really, really want someone to investigate and list the records and for WWE to make it the center of some storyline! (maybe the guys at voices of wrestling can do that? they love doing these kinds of things.)

Ok, hopefully next week has some bigger matches. Recap of this week’s: El Torito and Hornswaggle (2-1/2MB) are feuding (though not for the Cruiserweight title), BNB should wrestle exclusively in front of Limey’s, AJ’s on break or something so Tamina won a Battle Royal to face Paige, Eva Marie took the sickest bump when she was eliminated, Zeb is hilarious (WE DON’T MISS THE SWISS), Swagger stole the Paige Turner as a transitional move and can wrestle a perfect match and still lose to a stationary punch.

Man, that was a ‘Diva’s match? Because it didn’t look like a Diva’s match. GIrls were bringing the heat like I’d never seen them do before on WWE. And I”m fine with a scientific submission for the finish. Very nice.

I haven’t been so angry watching TV as I was when Cena began his whole, “LOL you think you scary but dis is fake jack so you just playing pretend cause I’m Cena who wear regular clothing cause LOL you just not scary jack.” I swear I heard Cole begin his douchey chuckle the second Bray began responding to Cena, which not only pissed me off, but scared me. Could it really be that easy to absolutely negate and destroy something so great? I seriously fucking hope not, but that was not a good sign. I mean, it’s patently obvious how unproductive and destructive that sort of shit is.

When Austin mocked The Rock early in their rivalry, for example (“I challenge you to get yourself a decent haircut. I challenge you to flush yourself down a commode.”), it was flippant and trivial. It wasn’t attempting destroying who The Rock was, or what he based himself as. On the flip side, I could see how The Rock wasn’t helping, like when he mocked The Undertaker’s “Mickey Mouse tattoos.” Fuck you, Rock. You were cooler as Rocky Maivia and when your theme song was a chilled out, smug “Ya smell what The Rock is cookin’?” rather than “IF YA SMEEELLL…”

I actually HATE the Rybaxel mash-up. It’s reminiscent of the Rhodes Brotherhood theme, which I also do not like. The only positive of the latter theme is that the base of it is Goldust’s awesome theme. Why couldn’t they have had Axel’s amazing theme with someone yelling “Ryback Rulez!” randomly or maybe some of the guitar parts of that song thrown in there once or twice? I do need to give credit where it’s due, however, as the Rybaxel mash-up is at least thoughtfully done (in that they tried pretty hard to slow down the Mr. Perfect theme and match its pitch and tone to Ryback’s theme).

The booking of Paige is certainly an odd one. I think if anyone wants to get all smarky and shit, you could argue that the underwhelming way they’ve booked Emma was at least predictable. She has a very difficult and nuanced character to understand, even if her biggest trait is dancing all silly and cute and the like. But Paige could be a real page turner (could not resist that); she could have a serious impact as her character was a serious competitor. Now she’s timid and uncertain? I don’t get it. Then again, Summer Rae is absolutely awesome in all capacity so there’s hope.

Evolution returning is pretty cool. I’ve got nothing bad to say about it, although the Instagram photo they put up makes them look like the naked, intergalactic con-artist thieves from that one Futurama movie.

I do miss thanking Mr. Sandow for being awesome, though. I won’t waste any hope on that coming back but still… *looks wistfully out the window while it rains*

Also: I thought the advancing participant nameplate was hilariously overly wordy. “‘Intercontinental Championship Tournament’ So-and-so advances in the Intercontinental Championship Tournament for a chance at the Intercontinental Championship.” A simple graphic of the IC title and the word “Advances” would have sufficed, but I’m glad they went their route. It’s like it was written by the Randall Kenneth Orton Corporation Expository and Medical Concern.

The reason we “re-wrote your entrance music” in New Orleans isn’t because “some of us love you and some of us hate you and we bought a ticket so we get to have an opinion,” John. It is because you have intentionally suppressed the future of the WWE. You have continually stunted the growth of and at times completely destroyed the characters of those whom you have to work with. Calling Alberto Del Rio out on not owning his cars or photoshopping the Wyatt Family is just asinine. What you do does not legitimize yourself. It only deligimitizes everyone around you and the entire WWE as an extension.

You are the worst thing about wrestling, John Cena and you are largely responsible for the WWE’s continued failure on the stock market. Please understand this concept before it’s too late and you have sunk the good ship pro wrestling forever.

Yours truly,
The motherfucker who will hit you in the head with a brick if you don’t cut this shit out

I’m fairly confident in saying now that the glorious “Next Generation of Diva” call up that’s going to completely revolutionize everything and change everyone’s perceptions about what women’s wrestling could be… Yeah, that ain’t gonna happen.

It’s not going to be some Nexus style takeover, some grand changing of the guard, some epic paradigm shift… It’s going to be Summer Rae getting called up and having no one to work with but Aksana and Cameron and Alicia Fox (who’s actually pretty damn good, but still…), so Summer doesn’t change how Divas wrestle on RAW, she adapts to how all the other girls are already “working.” Then Emma gets called up and she’s in the same boat, only a Raw-acclimated Summer is now on the list of girls she’s stuck working with. The same thing is happening to Paige and will happen to Sasha or Bayley or Charlotte or any other girl they bring up.

It seems sometimes like people were assuming all the NXT Divas would just suddenly be there on Raw one day and everything would change for the better, but as long as they keep having to work within the structure of the existing awful Diva match format, the won’t be any grand change to the landscape.

Sad to say this, but you’re right. Simply put, there aren’t enough “it” women with enough time on the main roster to get the division we want. WWE tv has like 15 guys alone who could carry some company filling the top slots and then like 50 more as opponents. In the women’s division, there’s maybe 4-5 (AJ, Paige, ffff… Emma? Bailey? Maybe’s) and like 10 “jobbers” (they beat the champ far too many times to be analogous to Slater). Even at NXT, Bailey and Sasha is nice, but how many more times are they gonna fight? It’s a numbers game the women will always lose (though I so want to be proven wrong).

Three quick notes:
1.) You like the Rybaxel mashup? It sounds like a 12-year-old used Windows Sound Recorder to overlay a midi of Mr. Perfect’s theme over some generic metal for his CAW tag team.

2.) I’m hoping Cesaro’s alignment with Heyman is setting the stage for a Cesaro-Lesnar hossfest, either at SummerSlam or WrestleMania. Prolonging his face turn could make it mean more, especially since the face side is dominated by Bryan, Cena, and the Shield at the moment.

3.) “BELIEVE……IN EVOLUTION.” Triple H loudly proclaims a firm anti-creationist stance, and you fail to mention it in Best and Worst? Tsk tsk.

So, if current Cena and Sheamus ever had a match, would it just go on forever, since neither can apparently lose? The old unstoppable force versus immovable object. Would the world end in a reality-shattering moment if one of them was pinned?

they wrestled that one RAW when the roster walked out on HHH as GM and only him as a referee, punk as a commentator and cena and sheamus stuck around or whatever. it stopped after the break with john f’n laurinates saving us from continuing that match to eternity by getting the roster back on terms of HHH stepping down from authority… until WWE decided that we should forget that and HHH is back as the boss.

This is odd. It seems like my comment about Dolph taking Bullhammers and stunt-doubling Sheamus, and the subsequent responses, was taken down. Anyone have any idea why this is? Not that it was an important milestone post or anything, I was just going back over the comments and noticed that it wasn’t there anymore, and am concerned that it could be some issue with me, or something in those comments.

As far as Bray/Cena goes…I think there’s something deeper happening and in the end of it, we’re going to see Bray become a true prophet and we’re going to see change in John Cena. We’re going to see Cena transition from PG Era to Reality Era. Just like the chain wearing rapping Cena was Ruthless Agression Era/Arguably Attitude Era and transitioned to the monster we see today.

Bray Wyatt is going to steer John Cena to the brink of sanity and when it’s over John Cena’s not going to be the guy who’s gimmick is that he doesn’t lose. He’s going to be the hero that deserves to BE called a hero instead of just the unassuming and ill-affected babyface catering to the kids.

1. spot on with the bo dallas/bray wyatt moment of similarity. and this kinda have become the thing that I’m anticipating the most in WWE now! the dream Bo/Wyatt encounters/feud in the future that’ll set the world on fire!

2. thank you SO MUCH for that ann dango video.

3. “I still kinda want Leo Kruger to step out of the Exotic Express with a machete and everyone forget Adam Rose existed.”
me, too. but I don’t want the second part, where everybody forgets adam rose ever existed. I wish we could have both, actually, the mick foley-way or the joseph park/abyss-way. can’t he just wear a fake goatee for that?

4. “that’s two Raws in a row that’ve gone off the air with The Shield main-eventing and me excited to see the next week’s show. That’s fantastic. I almost don’t know how to handle being excited for Raw. KEEP IT GOING, EVERYBODY.”
ah, how sweat this feeling is. thank you for everything, everybody.